Maria Oliva sorts through a fresh batch of California round tomatoes at the Gonzales Packing Company on Friday July 18, 2008 in Gonzales, Calif. Salmonella scares last month forced the company to temporarily lay off almost all of their employees after a demand for tomatoes hit rock bottom during what would normally be height of the season.Photo by Mike Kepka / The Chronicle less

Maria Oliva sorts through a fresh batch of California round tomatoes at the Gonzales Packing Company on Friday July 18, 2008 in Gonzales, Calif. Salmonella scares last month forced the company to temporarily ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Angie Horwath sits in front of a tomato sorter in her families factory, The Gonzales Packing Company on Friday July 18, 2008 in Gonzles, Calif. After salmonella scares last month, her family's business suffered severe losses and where forced to lay off almost all of their employee after a demand for tomatoes hit rock bottom during what would normally be height of the season.Photo by Mike Kepka / The Chronicle less

Angie Horwath sits in front of a tomato sorter in her families factory, The Gonzales Packing Company on Friday July 18, 2008 in Gonzles, Calif. After salmonella scares last month, her family's business suffered ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Workers sort through a fresh batch of California round tomatoes at the Gonzales Packing Company on Friday July 18, 2008 in Gonzales, Calif. Chronicle photo by Mike Kepka

Workers sort through a fresh batch of California round tomatoes at the Gonzales Packing Company on Friday July 18, 2008 in Gonzales, Calif. Chronicle photo by Mike Kepka

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Mature green tomatoes.
photo by Mike Kepka

Mature green tomatoes.
photo by Mike Kepka

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Salmonella scare hit state growers hard

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By the time the Food and Drug Administration cleared tomatoes Thursday in its investigation of a salmonella outbreak, California's tomato sales had plummeted more than 40 percent.

"It's a government-made disaster," said Melanie Horwath, office manager and a member of the fourth generation of the family that runs Gonzales Packing Company in the Salinas Valley that saw estimated crop losses of $2 million. "The government has a responsibility to only provide facts, not idle speculation. They're going to put us all out of business."

The FDA is now fingering raw jalapeno and serrano peppers as possible - though not certain - suspects. The agency didn't exactly give tomatoes a clean bill of health, but did say they are now determined to be safe.

"I don't think we have all answers yet," said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota who has led some of the nation's largest investigations of food-borne illnesses.

The fallout from the tomato fiasco, which began in April, is the latest in a line of food-safety scares whose damage has been magnified by the difficulty in pinpointing the source of contamination.

Tomato growers accuse the FDA of failing to do control studies interviewing people who ate tomatoes but did not get sick. Those are now under way.

A similar E. coli scare hit spinach in late 2006. Both salmonella and E. coli bacteria enter food through mammal feces, and can be transferred to produce by animals, humans and water. The government still does not know how E. coli contaminated spinach, but did link it to bagged spinach from Natural Selection Foods in San Juan Bautista (San Benito County).

The E. coli scare led to draconian responses by large growers in the Salinas Valley, where much of the nation's "leafy greens," such as spinach and lettuce, are grown.

Reaction to the spinach scare was so acute that large produce buyers, including restaurant chains and supermarkets, imposed harsh and often arbitrary demands on their suppliers that have caused collateral damage to water-quality and wildlife-habitat improvement efforts, organic growers said.

The goal is to eliminate all mammal feces by erecting big fences to prevent wildlife from entering fields and by ripping out vegetation used to buffer fields and streams, even though there is no evidence that wildlife caused the E-coli contamination.

"The effort on the part of FDA and some of the big buyers and the leafy-green handling association has been to try to eliminate wildlife from the farm environment, which is a very difficult thing to do," said Judith Redmond, owner of Full Belly Farm, a small, organic grower in Yolo County, and president of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers.

"It involves things like the FDA going to a cantaloupe farm and saying, 'Oh, there's a telephone wire above your farm, you're going to have to reroute that because birds could perch on that wire,' " Redmond said. "People in Salinas are putting up fences that are supposed to keep deer and (wild) pigs out at great expense and a huge disruption to wildlife corridors."

She said auditors are now asking for "clean strips - in other words, herbicides. No weeds, no plants, no nothing."

The false tomato warnings have sown widespread consumer confusion. A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll shows that nearly half of consumers have changed their eating habits in the past six months out of fear they could get sick.

California tomato growers were cleared by the FDA June 6, but that did little to stanch their losses, said Ed Beckman, president of the California Tomato Farmers, a Fresno-based cooperative. Tomato prices have plummeted 50 percent, Beckman said.

"It has been a tough struggle, because a lot of the messaging out in the national media really focused on the fact that the FDA was saying, 'Don't eat red round or Roma tomatoes unless they come from the following states,' " Beckman said. "The problem there is that you hear the first part of that sentence, but you don't necessarily hear the second."

Congress plans a hearing July 30. Beckman said his group wants to know why the FDA investigation took so long, given that Congress enacted the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, which requires food-handling companies to keep detailed records allowing tracing of food through the distribution chain.

"The trace-back investigation should not have taken as long as it did," Beckman said. "We know in the tomato industry we are required to hold these records. If there was someone that is involved in the handling of any produce item that is not doing their job, we need to have an understanding that that's the case. If that's not the case, then why did it take so long to come to the conclusion that FDA has come to?"

Despite the scope of the salmonella outbreak, illnesses caused by produce are rare. "When you think about the billions of servings of produce that occur each year, the frequency of food-borne illness with produce is still extremely, extremely low," the University of Minnesota's Osterholm said.

Any raw produce can be contaminated anywhere in the food chain, including the home. Bagged produce should be kept cool and all produce washed.

Some big growers complain that small farmers do not invest in the expensive handling practices that could improve food safety.

Small growers say consumers are better off buying locally.

"Tomatoes aren't the problem, peppers aren't the problem, cilantro's not the problem, spinach is not the problem," said Allen Hasty, owner of Yellow Wall Farm in Santa Cruz. "It's water contamination through animal feces and if you've got animals raised upstream ... . Obviously everyone can't go to a little small farm and buy their food, but I think there really needs to be greater awareness about where the food's coming from and try to keep it really super-local if possible."

Gonzalez tomato producer Horwath said California growers have some of the toughest protocols anywhere.

"There isn't any safer produce item," Horwath said. "This has just devastated our industry and consumer confidence. Bacteria contamination can occur anywhere in the food chain, including in the grocery store. Just wash your produce and wash it well."